The Panda and the Snow Leopard
by The Legendary Dragon Reaper
Summary: Stuck at his lowest point over the events of Enter the Dragon, Po receives some words of encouragement from an unexpected source, which turns out to be exactly what he needs to hear. Takes place during Enter the Dragon.


Po kept on tossing and turning until he finally sat up and sadly looked down at his own action figure "Who am I kidding? Shifu was right, I'm no hero. I'm just a big fat panda."

"No you're not just a big fat panda." a voice echoed "You are _the _big fat panda."

Po froze and slowly looked up, and his expression changed to one of horror "Tai Lung…"

Sure enough, before him stood Tai Lung, his body being surrounded by a blue glow "Calm yourself panda, I'm not here to fight. I'm here to talk."

"You're not gonna try to kill me for what happened the last time we met? You know when I used the Wuxi Finger Hold on you and sent you into the Spirit Realm and now that I hear it out loud I probably shouldn't have mentioned that."

"Well believe it or not I'm grateful that you did. You know you really do have a lot of time to think when you're dead, it gives you the chance you need to see what you could've become in life if you had walked down a different path, and see just how much of your own potential you had wasted." he gripped his fist slightly "I never wanted to hurt any of them, I just wanted what I had been led to believe was mine. I let myself get consumed by those ideals so heavily that when I was told by Oogway that I wasn't the one, I couldn't accept it. My denial turned to rage and hatred and I spent so long brooding over my lusting for power, for the Dragon Scroll. After the panda defeated me and sent me here using the Wuxi Finger Hold, I found Oogway waiting for me there. He told me just that I needed to relax a little bit, to take some time and smell the roses lined up along my path, and that life or the after life could turn out to be a lot of fun if I would allow it to be. Despite my initial anger and reluctance I did take his advice after some time had passed, and since then I've been able to see things that I was never able to see before, and things I was never able to hear. I've been watching my only nephew go down the path that he had chosen, I'm just glad the Dragon Warrior was able to stop him from making the same mistakes that I had made."

"Yeah well so much for that, because of my screw up all of my friends and the Valley of Peace, not to mention that they used to be your friends and your home, and maybe even China as a whole are in serious danger. Everything that I had because I was the Dragon Warrior is all gone and all because I didn't listen to Shifu and started acting like a total loser! I thought it was more important to be treated like a hero than to act like one, just like how you were! But now that I think about it, maybe if you had been the Dragon Warrior then we wouldn't have ended up in this mess. Not to mention Peng wouldn't have quit Kung Fu the way that he did."

"...Panda. Po. Look at me." Tai Lung forced Po to look at him and punched him in the face, sending him crashing to the ground.

"Ow, hey what the heck was-"

"Grow. Up."

"What?"

"The things you're saying now are like you think you're the only one suffering but I think it goes without saying that literally every master in the Jade Palace has some stories for you and I can assume that they all end with them coming to the Jade Palace. And before you start whining about Master Shifu not even wanting you there, again, and I get it, take a good long moment to consider that he was actually my father for all of my life as well as my teacher, and that doesn't even come close to the complete tragedy of parenthood that is Crane. I mean just go ahead and look at him."

"Yeah, not my best idea."

"But not your worst, believe me I've seen them. Anyway you think you're better than everyone else and yet here you sit on your hide, the good panda doing absolutely nothing, and while evil triumphs and your rigid cowardice crumbles into dust stained with the blood of all of those you love, the only victory that could be afforded to you is that you lived through the hell submersed in your own shame. You were a coward and a failure to your last whimper. Of fear and love, I fear not that my memory will die, but that all that I am that survives within my nephew Peng will die with him. So please panda, not just for the sake of your loved ones and your home, not even for the sake of China, but for the sake of yourself, stop holding back." and with that, he disappeared.

"What…" Po looked down at his action figure and let out a groan "Ghost and potential moral compass Tai Lung is right, I can't just bail on them now." and the next thing he knew he suddenly found himself running forward at full speed.

Not long after that Mr Ping woke up "Po, son where are you?" he looked down and found the action figure sitting all alone, and he gave a small fond smile "That's my boy, now go get them son."


End file.
